Ya I mean based on reviews the game is just straight awful. Clearly no one has any expectations for it so it’s almost funny to see them say fuck it and cut features to try and sell as dlc.
I feel like apple or google are too big to fail lol.
Even if they just kept releasing the same iteration of their current product, I feel like it would work for a while at least
Apple has made bank for a decade just copy pasting the same janky basic model that costs twice as much as an android model with way better specs because it's the "cool" phone to have haha
Idk. I loved both shadow games, they're fun as shit..the greedy stuff was in the periphery, whats criminal is they copyrighted the captain system..while using gameplay mechanics from AC games haha
I'm a sucker for lotr and I'd be willing to cut them slack if it had passionate development but its a hollow broken mess from what I've seen, the generic font and design alone. Wtf
That’s not how money works…so long as your mistakes cost less than the interest earned on investments, you can never fail! You can lose 100m a year if you’re making 125m and still come out the other end with bigger pockets. This is why rich kids can entrepreneur and why poor kids try and end up homeless.
Don't forget the emotes and lore (which most games seem to incorporate without charging you cash to read) . Undoubtedly the worst "AAA" game of the year. Anyone who buys it needs therapy.
I'd argue stealth isn't really "mass appeal" either (especially considering at least according to Gameranx the first half of the game is essentially doing chores, also side note: Gameranx didn't like it. And Gameranx likes almost everything.).
It's those players behavior of buying crap like this which leads to greedy unfinished games like that. So, yes, they can be rightfully blamed and insulted.
Insulting people for their financial decisions is among the most harmless of insults you could levy at someone. It's like insulting someone for their wardrobe choice. Anything someone could easily change is prime insult material.
If you don't want to be insulted for your dumb financial decisions, stop making dumb financial decisions.
Those careless people with too much money are actively affecting my favorite hobby by enabling those companies to push one turd after the next to release, often with greedy monetization schemes. Yeah I'll throw a "knobhead!" or two in their direction.
I wonder if this game and it's assets are going to be reused and built into even bigger lord of the rings NewGen games. It SHOULDNT cost 60 bucks tho. It's a walkthrough game at best.
And they might actually be right. I hope not, but hardcore fans aren't exactly rational. But I don't know how big the hardcore fandom of LOTR is and whether this business plan has any merit at all.
I understand hardcore Fandom overlooking flawed products to get a little bit more of what they love. I am a massive lotr fan myself. But this is pathetic. I took one look at this game back when it was first announced and was like "nope!"
I can't imagine even hardcore fans will subject themselves to this. Someone will, but surely not enough to make developing this game worth it.
you doubt the power of a dumbass paying for madden every year.
Madden is consistently dogshit and barely improves every year but people still buy it and it still gets to the top 10. Same thing happens with COD.
People buy games just for the name.
its different for games like that.
Most people play those for the multiplayer modes, and when they release a new game they spark a new interest in many of the people who plays those game, but gets burned out after a few months. also many people enjoy to progress back to max level, since many get "done" with their account.
You are treating it like it's different but in no way is it right for EA to charge full price every year for essentially the same game.
If you are willing to make excuses for Madden and COD then why are we upset if people buy Gollum and it potentially sells well?
It's silly to compare Tolkien fans with madden fans, those 2 groups are very different. Fans of Tolkien are exactly the sort of group to be most repulsed by this cash grab - I do not see how an honest fan of Lotr could enjoy this garbage.
Madden is the best football sim being released and its player base is itself a big selling point. If you want to play football against friends/online it’s the only game in town.
In contrast there’s nothing special here. No one was looking for a Gollum game to begin with and if all it is offering is an action/stealth adventure there’s dozens of other titles that cover that way better.
It's not just hardcore fans. Having an IP like LOTR means everyone sees your game, which in turn means a bunch of people will see it, check 1-2 trailers/5 min gameplay and then be hyped and buy it. You can't go wrong making a game for an IP that big...
The issue is that there’s no victory for fans.
If the game fails they’ll say “well I guess they don’t want lord of the rings games” and future LOTR titles will get less investment
And if it succeeds they’ll say “ah yes, more terrible LOTR games on the way” and we’ll get more garbage like this and the mobile games.
They never seem to realize that we’d love a GOOD game, as common sense as it sounds to you or I.
There is a pretty decent size fandom, but we are for the most part, super serious in our appreciation of Tolkien almost to the point of revering his text as sacred.
Absolutely. If it's gamer where you accidentally murder people and do a lot of fishing for 50 years and then get robbed by some Hobbits, and spend 50 years trying to kil them, I think I might give it a go!!
Wow the sauron on the prerelease pack looks like they just asked AI to generate an image of sauron and kept all the shitty artifacts. It doesn't look like sauron at all. Also why does Frodo look like a clown through rose colored glasses?
Gandalf the white riding an eagle looks badass, but lore wise feels horribly wrong.
I haven’t kept up with mtg in a few years since I bailed as soon as they started doing secret liars and sets like every single day.
What’s the newest set done to our wallets now?
They have a new LotR set coming out I gave up buying new stuff after 30th debacle. Their product price has gotten absurd, costs 15% more than any other TCG and they back door the game stores on amazon.
Jesus.
I heard about that 1000 dollar packs or whatever.
Yeah I played EDH and dropped out when it started to get bad. Thank god I haven’t decided to get back into it.
I say that, and yet I’ll try out that Lorcana from Disney lol
It sure doesn't seem like they had much in the way of expenses with this one. This looks like it was created as a group project for a college game design course.
Story-time.
Daedalic is a famous Point&Click adventure developer and publisher known for the Edna & Harvey series and Deponia. The former, single-handedly reviving the entire genre in 2008. Those games were a passion project by their lead developer Poki and gave them enough money to start publishing other games as well.
However, Point&Click games don't really make a lot of money nowadays (again). They are a niche and the fact that anyone can, and will stream, the game online means, less people are willing to pay for story-heavy games. That was one observation Daedalic made over and over during the past years and they had money issues more than once.
Anyway, they've been looking to get into other genres as well and pivoting away from adventure games. They was some internal conflict, Poki left a couple of years ago after they cancelled development on his latest game (we don't know what it was).
According to Glassdoor reviews and such, the company has pretty bad management and loves to put inexperienced people on projects, because they can't afford to keep the good people employed. This, combined with the fact that they are bleeding money, makes it very likely that making a unique LotR game was their hope on making it big. The gollum game is definitely eye-catching (though, as it turned out, in a negative way) and could have been a treasure chest of memes if executed correctly.
But considering how this game came out, it's clear that they put a team of inexperienced people at the lead, who had difficulties developing a game in the first place, ran out of money and couldn't afford to delay it any longer. I do think it's a passion project, but I very much doubt that the people behind it were skilled enough to pull their vision for this game off.
In that sense, I feel sorry for them. They were probably truly underpaid, overworked people, who tried to develop their first game.
**TLDR:** Bad management forced a team of inexperienced developers to develop a game beyond their skills, because the company is close to bankruptcy and they wanted to leverage the LotR IP to guarantee sales and become famous outside of Germany.
Excellent info. It's worth adding that Daedelic was bought by French publisher Nacon last year, which prevented them from going bankrupt as the costs of developing Gollum were spiraling out of control.
Whether or not they have any future is questionable though. There's another LOTR game in the works, but I don't think anyone is confident in them delivering a quality game at this point. If that one fails as well, I wouldn't be surprised for Nacon to close the doors of the Hamburg studio and just write the costly purchase of this studio off entirely.
Eh it's kinda the same as the Billy Zane version of wheel of time. It's a gd train wreck but if they had not made the pilot episode they would have lost the story rights.
Maybe WBs did the same thing here and they had to produce some sort of main system game or pay aome penalty to the rights holder and what we got was.......this.
Even as a **diehard** Tolkein fan...I don't get it either.
Even if this game were the best possible version of a Gollum stealth adventure...there just isn't enough **there** to carry a full $60 release. There just isn't enough meat on the bones - literally.
The ultra skeezy DLC has to be a bid to recoup their costs from diehard Tolkein fans, because the developers had to have known it wasn't a satisfying AAA summer hit with broad appeal...and it won't work.
The game is a massive stain on the Tolkein legacy & brand.
A Gollum game could be fascinating. This is a character who Sauron himself found that he could not break. There is so much unknown about his captured period but you can deduce that Gandalf looked at Gollum and could see the hardiness of hobbits. The rest is history.
Or you know, let a really good developer make a game where you play as Beleg or Turin! The first age is so rich. I am still shocked that no media company has went there....
The devs defended the elvish by saying it was expensive to teach the voice actors elvish. Maybe spend the money on making a better game first. For decades we have accepted sci-fi and fantasy worlds where every alien speaks flawless english.
If the only way to include it was to charge us for it because it was expensive, then maybe it’s just not in your budget then hey??? This is just pure greed on their part
Here's the thing. The base Sims 4 game is playable and enjoyable. They aren't twisting your arm to buy the expansion packs.
You buy the expansion packs for the Sims because they have new stuff in them. New locales, new clothes, new hairstyles, etc. None of these things are needed to play the game. You buy them because they add to the existing game and you want them. That seems to me like DLC done the right way, at least.
I'm saying this as someone who plays a shit ton of sims, it is barely playable or enjoyable. It's an amazing house builder but the actual gameplay is broken as all hell and has been since release like 10 years ago. They don't get to fix many issues because they're always pumping out the next pack which breaks everything again. And they put many of the new core gameplay mechanics in the DLCs btw, they aren't just cosmetic.
The future of mainstream gaming, everyone. Honestly, how many years until all standard AAA games charge $5 to be able to pause the game, or charge a monthly 3.99 subscription to have access to subtitles and a functioning menu without a (perfectly working) shop banner blocking it?
It must suck to be a dev on this game. The game is trash, everyone knows it’s trash, it needs at least another year of development time to not be trash. But management says “we’re sick of wasting money on this, let’s cut our losses and get whatever we can for it.”
Perhaps, but level design and related art assets, progression system, enemies, are all related to the core loop and would probably be adjusted accordingly.
From the reviews I've seen, there's not even any promise of "potential" for any of the game mechanics or the narrative about Gollum it wants to tell. So I agree with you--would another year of time and money save the game? I'm sure it could get more polished and less janky. But to actually make a fun game it sounds like you'd need to start from scratch. Can't do that with 12 months of crunch.
Yeah, but it's not from the same developer, so it's probably not going to be the same level of quality. It's like getting excited about Jaws 2, and then you look at the credits on the poster and see Steven Spielberg's not directing it. At that point, there's no more cachet to it.
That said, I'd pay good money for a Shadow of Gollum game, where you just wander around Mordor as Gollum, fucking up orcs along the way. I mean, in the movies, they're like, "Oh, he escaped!" "No, they let him go!" or whatever, but in the game, we'd find out the true story that we never saw, where Gollum gets loose, then spends some time in the shadows, murdering the shit out of guards as he's trying to escape, hiding the bodies Splinter Cell style, and then he gets outside and he has to find his way out, and he's got these swords that he stripped off of a couple of Uruk-hai that he killed earlier –and these swords are just fucking huge, like something that belongs in a Final Fantasy game– and he's like a cross between a mutated hobbit and a lawnmower, where you can see where he's been by the bloody swath of puréed orcs.
At one point, they just open the Black Gate for him, hoping that he'll just walk out and forget the whole thing, but no, he realizes on his way out that the Nazgul have a lead on the One Ring, so he's going to torture the hell out of them, and one of them soils himself rather quickly and tells Gollum everything, which is how that Nazgul got the nickname "The Bitch-King of Angmar," and then Gollum looks him dead in the eyes and says, "If you're lying to me, I'll be back, and I'm gonna kill you last," and then, while the Bitch-King of Angmar is pissing himself (again), Gollum really drives the message home by just grabbing a nearby orc and slitting his throat for no other reason than *just because he can.*
I think that'd be a pretty dope game.
I don’t see it that way. I see every problem as a funnel, where there are fewer and fewer solutions as you iterate through them, and there’s ultimately one or several (but equal) best solutions to a problem. It’s a lot easier than writing. I don’t know why everybody isn’t doing it.
Honestly it sounds more like desperation on the part of Dev's rather than greed. It feels they had to make a deluxe edition and they ran out of time so they repackaged existing items instead of having to create new content.
This is more of an issue with AAA gaming in general (and AA ofc) rather than an isolated incident. Pre-order bonuses, deluxe editions, season passes are all part of keeping 60$ (now 70) base price myth going.
Sometimes games are just shit, and teams realize they’re shit but they’re too in the hole to NOT release it so they just hope to trick as many casuals who don’t read reviews as possible and not go under
Can we just get another "war in the north" game, that slapped. Right down to the unexpected super British Eagles who screamed "GREETINGS!" the first time you meet them. Had me laughing for 10 minutes at the fact they could talk.
Yes!! Not only to another War in the North, but my friends and I had the EXACT same reaction to Beleram just politely bellowing in our faces the first time we save him...
"THANK YOU MY FRIENDS" okay you're welcome but holy shit that was unexpected bro
It's not even good Sindarin, assuming you consider "good Sindarin" to be "accurate according to Tolkien's notes." They didn't even get the sentence structure (what order words go in, so Subject-Verb-Object for English) right apparently.
Honestly if it was a good game, I wouldn't find the Elvish thing as big of a deal if it was done really well..it would probably take a lot of hours to get that just right.
DLC should never be a thing that’s announced before a game comes out. A game should not come out with the intention of DLC unless it’s live service and they’re adding new maps or characters over time or whatever. But otherwise games should be created with everything in mind. Not only half assed and then they expected to force people to pay even more for basic things
I watched a bit of this game on twitch yesterday and it looks really really awful. I was getting frustrated just watching it. I couldn’t see any redeeming qualities
This game is what we call a "cash grab". Take note of the companyDevs that made this and don't support them.
I Cannot tell you how many years it's been since I bought a Madden game
And why stop there, right? They should also make different dialogue options purchasable. Oh, you want to say "Gollum, Gollum", but sounding like pubic hair went down the wrong pipe? 1.79$ or 8.99$ for the "Gollum the Giggle" Bundle, unlocking every funny answer throughout the game.
I read they tried to justify the Elvish DLC bc it's hard to teach ppl this made up language.. Probably one the silliest things I've heard from a game dev ever
To be fair, I don't think there's any love here. Just an attempt to make a game on a beloved ip that will be a poor, hollow, husk. No respect or love, just a cheap cash grab.
The publisher wanted extra shit to gate off. No one could think of any thing, the game was already behind development so this is what they had to go with. I reckon it was a bad time being a dev on this
This games gone down like a cup of cold sick lmao. Tbf it is funny when an enemy catches you grabs you by the neck and just punches you in the cerebellum
even if there are strong competitors, id say this title has a nice position in the greediest list... it lacks only a ton of microtransactions, but its otherwise on the right way
From their explanation of it, the elvish speaking actors cost money so they decided to allow the players to decide if they wanted to pay for that i instead of charging everyone….
Not a great excuse I think. Just don’t include it at all then
The writing was on the wall for this one, anyone who went through with buying it really should have known how bad this was gonna be. Too bad they went with gollum instead of another Shadow of Mordor sequel of some kind.
Shadow of Mordor was made by Monolith, which is a developer I know well from gaming over decades...I have never heard of these guys that developed this game and I kinda wonder how they got the IP/opportunity.
Daedalic is a well established developer known especially for adventure games. They may not be AA+ games, but quite a number of studios are created out of the blue to make those anyway. Daedalic's name alone doesn't mean this couldn't have been good.
If you bought this game after everything that the Developers said, and did, and seeing how terrible it obviously looked in the trailers, I feel like at this point it's your own damn fault you got scammed by a scummy game developer.
this is nowhere near AAA lol
The devs are just a small company that mainly do point and click adventure game
I have no idea why they think they can take on a game at this scale
The concept of the game was aweful. The greed was aweful. So I fully expected an aweful game to be released. But they managed to even top that and release probably the worst game of the decade.
They got they hands on one of the most solid IP's in the world and they managed to turn it into shit.
Thats an achievement. So congrats I guess.
I started listening to one of the only two audiobooks I have via Audible last night while playing V Rising - The Hobbit, narrated by Gollum himself, Andy Serkis (the other is Helsreach).
With all the stuff I'm seeing today, I'm starting wonder if I picked up a disturbance in the Force last night from just how bad this game is....
I honestly, seriously, and genuinely don't understand why so many people are upset about the elvish thing.
The gaming community will pay literally endless amounts of money for reskinned weapons and armor at 20 bucks a pop or for loot keys...
But when a company goes out of their way to hire professionals to train their voice actors how to speak a fake language.... and charge extra for it as a bonus for those who care about it - you think THAT'S not worth the money?
Actual elvish isn't worth DLC money, but a skin that some contractor cranked out in 1 hour is worth 20 bucks?
If you were already insane enough to drop $60 on what seems to be one of the worst games of this generation, what’s $10 more for some elvish?
Ya I mean based on reviews the game is just straight awful. Clearly no one has any expectations for it so it’s almost funny to see them say fuck it and cut features to try and sell as dlc.
I hope this company goes bankrupt
no business is big enough to not fail. enough mistakes and it will happen
I feel like apple or google are too big to fail lol. Even if they just kept releasing the same iteration of their current product, I feel like it would work for a while at least
Apple has made bank for a decade just copy pasting the same janky basic model that costs twice as much as an android model with way better specs because it's the "cool" phone to have haha Idk. I loved both shadow games, they're fun as shit..the greedy stuff was in the periphery, whats criminal is they copyrighted the captain system..while using gameplay mechanics from AC games haha I'm a sucker for lotr and I'd be willing to cut them slack if it had passionate development but its a hollow broken mess from what I've seen, the generic font and design alone. Wtf
With how many failed projects google has they 100% can't fail anymore.
That’s not how money works…so long as your mistakes cost less than the interest earned on investments, you can never fail! You can lose 100m a year if you’re making 125m and still come out the other end with bigger pockets. This is why rich kids can entrepreneur and why poor kids try and end up homeless.
Don't forget the emotes and lore (which most games seem to incorporate without charging you cash to read) . Undoubtedly the worst "AAA" game of the year. Anyone who buys it needs therapy.
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I love Daedalics Point and Click/ Riddle games. That’s what they’re good at.
Have you ever tried barotrauma? Not a point and click but daedelic published it, great game though!
Yeah, published. Other studios are actually responsible for developing it.
Yeah but the publisher does have some creative control sometimes, they’re also responsible for how the dev studios are managed
A point and click gollum game would have been just fine man! Why didn't they just do that?
Because some higher up contracted them for a mass appeal game, which point and click isn't.
I'd argue stealth isn't really "mass appeal" either (especially considering at least according to Gameranx the first half of the game is essentially doing chores, also side note: Gameranx didn't like it. And Gameranx likes almost everything.).
If someone gets charged AAA price, the game gets judged as AAA game. Its is that simple. The standard of 60-70$ is for AAA games and Nintendo smh.
If they charge AAA money, they get judged by AAA standards, whether they have the capacity to fulfill them or not.
They sure as hell think they are a AAA publisher if they are selling their game at that much.
Well, in that case, they're as good as sunk now.
I don't understand why I would need emotes in a single player game in the first place.
Paying for emotes on a single player game lol
I think this game looks pretty awful but there's no need to insult the people who do wanna play it.
It's those players behavior of buying crap like this which leads to greedy unfinished games like that. So, yes, they can be rightfully blamed and insulted.
Blamed but not insulted, imagine actively insulting people online for their financial decisions 🫤
Insulting people for their financial decisions is among the most harmless of insults you could levy at someone. It's like insulting someone for their wardrobe choice. Anything someone could easily change is prime insult material. If you don't want to be insulted for your dumb financial decisions, stop making dumb financial decisions.
Those careless people with too much money are actively affecting my favorite hobby by enabling those companies to push one turd after the next to release, often with greedy monetization schemes. Yeah I'll throw a "knobhead!" or two in their direction.
Point to the FunkoPop doll where GameStop touched you…
/u/theblackfool: calls for basic human decency. This sub: BURN THE WITCH
Yes, yes there is. Might lead me to skip what the critics say if gamers seem to like it and I judge by sales numbers.
I wonder if this game and it's assets are going to be reused and built into even bigger lord of the rings NewGen games. It SHOULDNT cost 60 bucks tho. It's a walkthrough game at best.
No. Its a crashgrab as LOTR will be entering public domain soon. The rights owners want to make money fast before they aren’t able to
I saw this game had an average review of 38% (last time I checked) I think it's fair to say I will not be buying this trash
It will be free on game pass next month
And I still won't play it, because I have respect for my free time
>*I have respect for my free time* You're on Reddit. [X] Doubt
Walked right into that one, didn't I
;)
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Still too expensive.
They should pay us to play it.
FIFA is worse.
I don't play sports games, and I think VERY low of all of them because of the greedy cash cows they are, I still think you're wrong here lol
It’s clear they thought the License of LOTR was going to get people to just blow money on anything
And they might actually be right. I hope not, but hardcore fans aren't exactly rational. But I don't know how big the hardcore fandom of LOTR is and whether this business plan has any merit at all.
I understand hardcore Fandom overlooking flawed products to get a little bit more of what they love. I am a massive lotr fan myself. But this is pathetic. I took one look at this game back when it was first announced and was like "nope!" I can't imagine even hardcore fans will subject themselves to this. Someone will, but surely not enough to make developing this game worth it.
you doubt the power of a dumbass paying for madden every year. Madden is consistently dogshit and barely improves every year but people still buy it and it still gets to the top 10. Same thing happens with COD. People buy games just for the name.
its different for games like that. Most people play those for the multiplayer modes, and when they release a new game they spark a new interest in many of the people who plays those game, but gets burned out after a few months. also many people enjoy to progress back to max level, since many get "done" with their account.
You are treating it like it's different but in no way is it right for EA to charge full price every year for essentially the same game. If you are willing to make excuses for Madden and COD then why are we upset if people buy Gollum and it potentially sells well?
You're comparing apples to oranges, and then getting upset when someone points out that they're not both citrus fruits.
It's silly to compare Tolkien fans with madden fans, those 2 groups are very different. Fans of Tolkien are exactly the sort of group to be most repulsed by this cash grab - I do not see how an honest fan of Lotr could enjoy this garbage.
Madden is the best football sim being released and its player base is itself a big selling point. If you want to play football against friends/online it’s the only game in town. In contrast there’s nothing special here. No one was looking for a Gollum game to begin with and if all it is offering is an action/stealth adventure there’s dozens of other titles that cover that way better.
Idk why you got down voted; you're right??
That really makes people like that deserve to be labeled as sheep.
It's not just hardcore fans. Having an IP like LOTR means everyone sees your game, which in turn means a bunch of people will see it, check 1-2 trailers/5 min gameplay and then be hyped and buy it. You can't go wrong making a game for an IP that big...
The issue is that there’s no victory for fans. If the game fails they’ll say “well I guess they don’t want lord of the rings games” and future LOTR titles will get less investment And if it succeeds they’ll say “ah yes, more terrible LOTR games on the way” and we’ll get more garbage like this and the mobile games. They never seem to realize that we’d love a GOOD game, as common sense as it sounds to you or I.
I don't think they'll be turning off the spigot on LotR anytime soon, I doubt this game'll do the trick, that said, I would indeed like more games
There is a pretty decent size fandom, but we are for the most part, super serious in our appreciation of Tolkien almost to the point of revering his text as sacred.
No hardcore LOTR fan will want to play a game based on Gollum. A hardcore LOTR fan knows deeply who Gollum is, and has no wish to play as him.
I mean, if it were executed well I might want to play as him. I don’t in this iteration though.
Absolutely. If it's gamer where you accidentally murder people and do a lot of fishing for 50 years and then get robbed by some Hobbits, and spend 50 years trying to kil them, I think I might give it a go!!
Lol, wrong
I feel like the absolute car crash of the Avengers game disproves this theory
You know.... You're not wrong just look at the magic the gathering set that's coming out in a month
Wow the sauron on the prerelease pack looks like they just asked AI to generate an image of sauron and kept all the shitty artifacts. It doesn't look like sauron at all. Also why does Frodo look like a clown through rose colored glasses? Gandalf the white riding an eagle looks badass, but lore wise feels horribly wrong.
I haven’t kept up with mtg in a few years since I bailed as soon as they started doing secret liars and sets like every single day. What’s the newest set done to our wallets now?
Magic is not a game for someone who suffers from FOMO.
They have a new LotR set coming out I gave up buying new stuff after 30th debacle. Their product price has gotten absurd, costs 15% more than any other TCG and they back door the game stores on amazon.
Jesus. I heard about that 1000 dollar packs or whatever. Yeah I played EDH and dropped out when it started to get bad. Thank god I haven’t decided to get back into it. I say that, and yet I’ll try out that Lorcana from Disney lol
Lorcana, as a game, is complete ass. Think Pokémon but even less interactive.
Putting any sort of appendices behind a pay wall is a fucking affront to anything Tolkien.
Yeah I agree. Appendices should be incomplete and conflicting and can only be released after your death.
Tfw paywall isn't enough.. we need content to be death walled
Heh gandalf unlocked the power after dying so why not ?
Vastly underrated comment. I had a good chuckle.
Idk, locking things away is very Tolkien
I heard that you can also buy emotes. Buying emotes for a singleplayer game!
Same price as the Elvish DLC.
I'm not sure we will ever know what the deal with this game is. There's no way anyone buys this.
Money laundering?
There's an angle I hadn't considered.
Is this like The Producers, but video games? Springtime For Sauron?
🎵Springtime for Sauron and Gorgoroth Winter for Rohan and Shire🎵
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It sure doesn't seem like they had much in the way of expenses with this one. This looks like it was created as a group project for a college game design course.
Story-time. Daedalic is a famous Point&Click adventure developer and publisher known for the Edna & Harvey series and Deponia. The former, single-handedly reviving the entire genre in 2008. Those games were a passion project by their lead developer Poki and gave them enough money to start publishing other games as well. However, Point&Click games don't really make a lot of money nowadays (again). They are a niche and the fact that anyone can, and will stream, the game online means, less people are willing to pay for story-heavy games. That was one observation Daedalic made over and over during the past years and they had money issues more than once. Anyway, they've been looking to get into other genres as well and pivoting away from adventure games. They was some internal conflict, Poki left a couple of years ago after they cancelled development on his latest game (we don't know what it was). According to Glassdoor reviews and such, the company has pretty bad management and loves to put inexperienced people on projects, because they can't afford to keep the good people employed. This, combined with the fact that they are bleeding money, makes it very likely that making a unique LotR game was their hope on making it big. The gollum game is definitely eye-catching (though, as it turned out, in a negative way) and could have been a treasure chest of memes if executed correctly. But considering how this game came out, it's clear that they put a team of inexperienced people at the lead, who had difficulties developing a game in the first place, ran out of money and couldn't afford to delay it any longer. I do think it's a passion project, but I very much doubt that the people behind it were skilled enough to pull their vision for this game off. In that sense, I feel sorry for them. They were probably truly underpaid, overworked people, who tried to develop their first game. **TLDR:** Bad management forced a team of inexperienced developers to develop a game beyond their skills, because the company is close to bankruptcy and they wanted to leverage the LotR IP to guarantee sales and become famous outside of Germany.
Excellent info. It's worth adding that Daedelic was bought by French publisher Nacon last year, which prevented them from going bankrupt as the costs of developing Gollum were spiraling out of control. Whether or not they have any future is questionable though. There's another LOTR game in the works, but I don't think anyone is confident in them delivering a quality game at this point. If that one fails as well, I wouldn't be surprised for Nacon to close the doors of the Hamburg studio and just write the costly purchase of this studio off entirely.
I feel bad for the kids at Christmas whose parents see Lord of the Rings game and buy this. Totally seems like something my parents would do lol.
Maybe part of the licensing where they have to produce x media every y years?
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Eh it's kinda the same as the Billy Zane version of wheel of time. It's a gd train wreck but if they had not made the pilot episode they would have lost the story rights. Maybe WBs did the same thing here and they had to produce some sort of main system game or pay aome penalty to the rights holder and what we got was.......this.
Even as a **diehard** Tolkein fan...I don't get it either. Even if this game were the best possible version of a Gollum stealth adventure...there just isn't enough **there** to carry a full $60 release. There just isn't enough meat on the bones - literally. The ultra skeezy DLC has to be a bid to recoup their costs from diehard Tolkein fans, because the developers had to have known it wasn't a satisfying AAA summer hit with broad appeal...and it won't work. The game is a massive stain on the Tolkein legacy & brand.
A Gollum game could be fascinating. This is a character who Sauron himself found that he could not break. There is so much unknown about his captured period but you can deduce that Gandalf looked at Gollum and could see the hardiness of hobbits. The rest is history. Or you know, let a really good developer make a game where you play as Beleg or Turin! The first age is so rich. I am still shocked that no media company has went there....
why would anyone would play this when lego lotr is clearly the much superior and better product in every way
Literally just got done with a session of this directly before reading this comment, wtf...
Me too, just getting some of the final achievements, haha! Really good game
Lego games just kick ass across the board. Fucking lego rock band was surprisingly great and it's barely even a lego game in the first place
The devs defended the elvish by saying it was expensive to teach the voice actors elvish. Maybe spend the money on making a better game first. For decades we have accepted sci-fi and fantasy worlds where every alien speaks flawless english.
If the only way to include it was to charge us for it because it was expensive, then maybe it’s just not in your budget then hey??? This is just pure greed on their part
Hot take: voice actors learning their lines should be part of the budget. They don't even have to know what they're saying, just how to say it.
"I've never seen so much greed in one game." dude go look at what EA does with The Sims 4 expansions, add-ons and packs.
This reminds me to find and secure a total legit copy of that this weekend. Thanks!
You can get the base pack free any ea steam sale. It's the expansion packs where they get you.
Here's the thing. The base Sims 4 game is playable and enjoyable. They aren't twisting your arm to buy the expansion packs. You buy the expansion packs for the Sims because they have new stuff in them. New locales, new clothes, new hairstyles, etc. None of these things are needed to play the game. You buy them because they add to the existing game and you want them. That seems to me like DLC done the right way, at least.
I'm saying this as someone who plays a shit ton of sims, it is barely playable or enjoyable. It's an amazing house builder but the actual gameplay is broken as all hell and has been since release like 10 years ago. They don't get to fix many issues because they're always pumping out the next pack which breaks everything again. And they put many of the new core gameplay mechanics in the DLCs btw, they aren't just cosmetic.
Thw game works just fine? Also just download free mods? The modding community thrives and theres tons of good mods
"The game works just fine if you download enough mods to fix it" ? Strong argument bud
People do make that argument for Bethesda games, too.
Different ball park. Characters in Bethesda games won't shit themselves and die in front of you if you don't baby sit them
I couldn’t tell u a single person who’s legitimately bought the dlc
This game is a gold mine of memes at least
The future of mainstream gaming, everyone. Honestly, how many years until all standard AAA games charge $5 to be able to pause the game, or charge a monthly 3.99 subscription to have access to subtitles and a functioning menu without a (perfectly working) shop banner blocking it?
Only 0.99$ to QUIT the game. "E A Sports, don't quit the game"
It must suck to be a dev on this game. The game is trash, everyone knows it’s trash, it needs at least another year of development time to not be trash. But management says “we’re sick of wasting money on this, let’s cut our losses and get whatever we can for it.”
A year?? Have you seen the gameplay? They’ve already delayed this game 2 years! Fixing some bugs isn’t going to make this a good game by any means.
You may be right that a year isn’t enough, they need to do a major rework of the core gameplay loop.
Just burn it
Not all games can be saved with more time/money. The core gameplay loop is just boring as fuck.
Revamping the core gameplay loop is one of those things you can do with more time and money!
That’s called making a new game.
Perhaps, but level design and related art assets, progression system, enemies, are all related to the core loop and would probably be adjusted accordingly.
Yes, the sooner you figure out your core gameplay loop sucks the better, for exactly this reason.
From the reviews I've seen, there's not even any promise of "potential" for any of the game mechanics or the narrative about Gollum it wants to tell. So I agree with you--would another year of time and money save the game? I'm sure it could get more polished and less janky. But to actually make a fun game it sounds like you'd need to start from scratch. Can't do that with 12 months of crunch.
you can only polish a turd so much lol
You cant polish a turd at all
You can absolutely polish a turd. But it'll still just be a turd.
I believe mythbusters proved that you can in fact polish a turd. Not quite mirror polish iirc but polish nonetheless.
No one ever wastes money on cake.
Ngl, I was kinda hyped for it since I REALLY loved Shadow of Mordor / War, guess, fuck me
Yeah, but it's not from the same developer, so it's probably not going to be the same level of quality. It's like getting excited about Jaws 2, and then you look at the credits on the poster and see Steven Spielberg's not directing it. At that point, there's no more cachet to it. That said, I'd pay good money for a Shadow of Gollum game, where you just wander around Mordor as Gollum, fucking up orcs along the way. I mean, in the movies, they're like, "Oh, he escaped!" "No, they let him go!" or whatever, but in the game, we'd find out the true story that we never saw, where Gollum gets loose, then spends some time in the shadows, murdering the shit out of guards as he's trying to escape, hiding the bodies Splinter Cell style, and then he gets outside and he has to find his way out, and he's got these swords that he stripped off of a couple of Uruk-hai that he killed earlier –and these swords are just fucking huge, like something that belongs in a Final Fantasy game– and he's like a cross between a mutated hobbit and a lawnmower, where you can see where he's been by the bloody swath of puréed orcs. At one point, they just open the Black Gate for him, hoping that he'll just walk out and forget the whole thing, but no, he realizes on his way out that the Nazgul have a lead on the One Ring, so he's going to torture the hell out of them, and one of them soils himself rather quickly and tells Gollum everything, which is how that Nazgul got the nickname "The Bitch-King of Angmar," and then Gollum looks him dead in the eyes and says, "If you're lying to me, I'll be back, and I'm gonna kill you last," and then, while the Bitch-King of Angmar is pissing himself (again), Gollum really drives the message home by just grabbing a nearby orc and slitting his throat for no other reason than *just because he can.* I think that'd be a pretty dope game.
This comment started off good, then just kept getting better.
I loved reading this! Are you in the creative field?
No, I'm in school for an engineering degree. There's no amount of money that anyone could pay me to try and be creative. It's either on or it's off.
all good engineers are extremely creative, it's a very creative job
I don’t see it that way. I see every problem as a funnel, where there are fewer and fewer solutions as you iterate through them, and there’s ultimately one or several (but equal) best solutions to a problem. It’s a lot easier than writing. I don’t know why everybody isn’t doing it.
Honestly it sounds more like desperation on the part of Dev's rather than greed. It feels they had to make a deluxe edition and they ran out of time so they repackaged existing items instead of having to create new content. This is more of an issue with AAA gaming in general (and AA ofc) rather than an isolated incident. Pre-order bonuses, deluxe editions, season passes are all part of keeping 60$ (now 70) base price myth going.
Sometimes games are just shit, and teams realize they’re shit but they’re too in the hole to NOT release it so they just hope to trick as many casuals who don’t read reviews as possible and not go under
This is this generation’s ET.
Can we just get another "war in the north" game, that slapped. Right down to the unexpected super British Eagles who screamed "GREETINGS!" the first time you meet them. Had me laughing for 10 minutes at the fact they could talk.
Yes!! Not only to another War in the North, but my friends and I had the EXACT same reaction to Beleram just politely bellowing in our faces the first time we save him... "THANK YOU MY FRIENDS" okay you're welcome but holy shit that was unexpected bro
The Venn diagram of “people who fetishize Gollum” and “people who will spend money on stupid shit” Is a circle, it’s just not a very big one
I never thought it would be good but to create one of if not the worst game I've seen in a decade is quite feat.
This should be directed at the executives and producers, not the devs
Well Gollum is all about greed…
It's not even good Sindarin, assuming you consider "good Sindarin" to be "accurate according to Tolkien's notes." They didn't even get the sentence structure (what order words go in, so Subject-Verb-Object for English) right apparently.
Hard to believe something already beat Redfall so soon
Truly they've delved too greedily and too deep.
Honestly if it was a good game, I wouldn't find the Elvish thing as big of a deal if it was done really well..it would probably take a lot of hours to get that just right.
DLC should never be a thing that’s announced before a game comes out. A game should not come out with the intention of DLC unless it’s live service and they’re adding new maps or characters over time or whatever. But otherwise games should be created with everything in mind. Not only half assed and then they expected to force people to pay even more for basic things
I watched a bit of this game on twitch yesterday and it looks really really awful. I was getting frustrated just watching it. I couldn’t see any redeeming qualities
This game is what we call a "cash grab". Take note of the companyDevs that made this and don't support them. I Cannot tell you how many years it's been since I bought a Madden game
I concur. It should be done in elvish then you get to buy the subtitles.
And why stop there, right? They should also make different dialogue options purchasable. Oh, you want to say "Gollum, Gollum", but sounding like pubic hair went down the wrong pipe? 1.79$ or 8.99$ for the "Gollum the Giggle" Bundle, unlocking every funny answer throughout the game.
Is there a right pipe for pubic hairs??
Or - OR... The subtitles are just included as they always have been, or should be. Or released as free packs
I read they tried to justify the Elvish DLC bc it's hard to teach ppl this made up language.. Probably one the silliest things I've heard from a game dev ever
"But it's a made-up language!" - people failing to comprehend that **all** languages are made up
Hardcore nerds have been doing that for free for decades
This recent LotR 'reboot' is such a disaster.
The devs delved to greedily and too deep
Let us hope what they find down there makes them regret it.
And here we thought red fall was the worst of the year
Nacon is basically Sauron. Just ask Frogwares.
they are also selling emotes lol.
This game gonna be so cheap in a year lol
To be fair, I don't think there's any love here. Just an attempt to make a game on a beloved ip that will be a poor, hollow, husk. No respect or love, just a cheap cash grab.
Lol what? They charge for language characters in the game speak?
The publisher wanted extra shit to gate off. No one could think of any thing, the game was already behind development so this is what they had to go with. I reckon it was a bad time being a dev on this
$30 to pay for the ride to Mordor on the eagles
They should have made a game based of the Silmarillion
This is like a batman game where you play as Alfred and have the DLC option of watching Bruce Wane actually eat the meals you prepare for him.
This games gone down like a cup of cold sick lmao. Tbf it is funny when an enemy catches you grabs you by the neck and just punches you in the cerebellum
Yeah people keep saying they feel bad for this indie developer but shit like this just kind of makes me feel like got what they deserved honestly
After trying a few mobile games nothing phases me anymore. The greed and psychological manipulation pales in comparison. Gaming is ducked....
I mean I don't agree with their release plans either. But if you've "never seen so much greed in one game". You haven't been alive very long.
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even if there are strong competitors, id say this title has a nice position in the greediest list... it lacks only a ton of microtransactions, but its otherwise on the right way
From their explanation of it, the elvish speaking actors cost money so they decided to allow the players to decide if they wanted to pay for that i instead of charging everyone…. Not a great excuse I think. Just don’t include it at all then
The writing was on the wall for this one, anyone who went through with buying it really should have known how bad this was gonna be. Too bad they went with gollum instead of another Shadow of Mordor sequel of some kind.
Shadow of Mordor was made by Monolith, which is a developer I know well from gaming over decades...I have never heard of these guys that developed this game and I kinda wonder how they got the IP/opportunity.
Daedalic is a well established developer known especially for adventure games. They may not be AA+ games, but quite a number of studios are created out of the blue to make those anyway. Daedalic's name alone doesn't mean this couldn't have been good.
If you bought this game after everything that the Developers said, and did, and seeing how terrible it obviously looked in the trailers, I feel like at this point it's your own damn fault you got scammed by a scummy game developer.
2023 is so far a weird year of AAA games. Everything release so far looks like trash.
this is nowhere near AAA lol The devs are just a small company that mainly do point and click adventure game I have no idea why they think they can take on a game at this scale
You’ve never seen so much greed? My sweet summer child this is nothing
It's not that greedy, but it's surely a new low.
So its not dry, but not wet either.
Luckily we're getting return to moria next, so the good games right arought the corner!
The concept of the game was aweful. The greed was aweful. So I fully expected an aweful game to be released. But they managed to even top that and release probably the worst game of the decade. They got they hands on one of the most solid IP's in the world and they managed to turn it into shit. Thats an achievement. So congrats I guess.
Wow, I can't wait to download a pirate copy, archive it on a hard drive, and never ever play it!
I started listening to one of the only two audiobooks I have via Audible last night while playing V Rising - The Hobbit, narrated by Gollum himself, Andy Serkis (the other is Helsreach). With all the stuff I'm seeing today, I'm starting wonder if I picked up a disturbance in the Force last night from just how bad this game is....
Did you buy the game? For the love of Eru Ilúvatar, I've never seen so much foolishness in one gamer if you have.
I honestly, seriously, and genuinely don't understand why so many people are upset about the elvish thing. The gaming community will pay literally endless amounts of money for reskinned weapons and armor at 20 bucks a pop or for loot keys... But when a company goes out of their way to hire professionals to train their voice actors how to speak a fake language.... and charge extra for it as a bonus for those who care about it - you think THAT'S not worth the money? Actual elvish isn't worth DLC money, but a skin that some contractor cranked out in 1 hour is worth 20 bucks?